Something that I notice in a lot of comments in threads like this: “but it snowed massively at N event, thus climate change is expected variance and false”
What most models show across the board is actually more energetic events, and more chaotic events. Yes there is also a general trend towards hotter, but in general the main noticeable thing for a while will be more energy for weather events to do spectacular things. This could be hot, could be cold, could be windy, either way it’s gonna get more spectacular over time.
This is bad, humans, and human crops and animals rely on boring predictable weather that they evolved for.
> “but it snowed massively at N event, thus climate change is expected variance and false”
A lot of confusion in those comment could be cleared up by agreeing on this one simple fact:
CLIMATE CHANGE IS HAPPENING. We already know it, and it doesn't need to be proven again, because IT'S ALREADY PROVEN, beyond any reasonable doubt.
(Sorry for yelling.)
In other words, it's not like asking "Can we say the dice is loaded because we got three consecutive sixes?" It's more like asking, "OK, we know the dice is loaded, we understand the basic mechanism behind it, we even know who did it, and now we just got three consecutive sixes from this known loaded dice. What does it mean?"
"OK, we know the dice is loaded, we understand the basic mechanism behind it, we even know who did it, and now we just got three consecutive sixes from this known loaded dice. What does it mean?"
Probably not much if the premise is true. In which case bringing up such news basically invites those knee-jerk responses like “but it snowed massively at N event, thus climate change is expected variance and false”
>This is bad, humans, and human crops and animals rely on boring predictable weather that they evolved for.
As an example: a comment on reddit mentioned a documentary highlighting animals becoming easier prey as their naturally occuring winter/summer coats were no longer helping them hide from their predators in their natural environment. Quite the opposite in fact, if you happen to have a white winter coat when there's no snow.
This weakens the case in my opinion. First it was everything will get hotter, then it was the climate will change, now it’s weather events will get more spectacular.
Each claim is progressively harder to nail down and prove. If there’s one thing modern forms of media is good at, it’s make mundane things seem spectacular.
Due to higher CO2, more heat is captured in the atmosphere. Early on the naive messaging of that was “global warming”.
That added energy is changing the climate but it does not just mean that everything gets evenly warmer. The added energy means that some places get warmer than other. The differences mean that some areas get dryer and some get wetter.
Those increased differences in temperature and moisture result in storms and other weather events that have more energy and cause more problems. The large scale weather events like the Jet Stream or El Niño become more erratic . You get bigger storms, bigger floods. Sometimes you get bigger dumps of snow with the greater moisture. Some places get less moisture and are warmer for years at a time and fall into drought.
Those erratic weather and climate changes cause problems for humans, animals, and plants. More food sources underproduce or are destroyed. Hunger drives people to migrate. That causes disruptions in neighboring nations. Politics becomes more strident and antagonistic. Small wars eventually break out.
Yes, the messaging has changed a little over the years. That is partially as scientists have studied this more and learned more about both the primary and secondary effects of climate change. The media simplifying it so the public can understand has adjusted the terms they use as our understand realizes that this is not just a matter of simple warming but of a complicated system getting more unstable.
I wonder if that isn't happening already here and there.
Bigger ones? What'll happen when areas large as a country, becomes mostly uninhabitable.
One more thing: There might be more authoritarian regimes in countries not affected that badly by the climate changes -- because the migrants will want to go there. And then the voters in those places, choose more brutal and authoritarian governments who build borders and use violence to keep the migrants away.
So, more war and dictatorships in the future, is one scenario?
Yes, I didn’t want the person I was responding to to say that I was being dramatic but when food and water are unstable and migrations disrupt those around them, societies get more desperate and can become more aggressive and war is the result.
The media isn't making the case. Scientists who have been studying this for decades are. It's a failing of the media perhaps (not the science) that you perceive a shifting of the goal posts.
The "case" is settled, by the way. It's only special interest groups with a financial incentive in the status quo that try to muddy the water with disinfo and make it seem otherwise. Those, and people who don't want to believe it's happening because it's uncomfortable.
If the evidence supports the claim, A is clearly easier. If there’s a lack of evidence, B is clearly easier to prove because level is “spectacular ness” has no clear definitions.
Of course someone could probably come up with a spectacularness metric, but at that point there’s so many assumptions you have to make it’s almost a circular argument.
This is, of course, easier to prove. In fact, mountains of evidences support this claim. It can be considered "proven" in the same way the heliocentric theory or the existence of Pangea is considered proven.
The problem is that people don't understand what "average" means, and keep saying things like "If the earth is warming how come my town got record snowfall last winter? This disproves global warming!"
In other words, the renaming of "Global Warming" to "Climate Change" has got nothing to do with the abundance (or lack) of evidences. It's a purely pedagogical issue.
Vested interests that depend on oil, gas, and coal are even more motivated by funding and have definitely seeded a lot of doubt into the public discourse. This is sometimes called astro-turfing. It looks like grass but it was manufactured. People then pickup those false “facts” and misleading questions and feed it back into conversations about climate change. One of their favorite tactics is to claim that scientists only talk about climate change to get rich on funding.
Scientists go into science not to make a lot of money (they don’t) they tend to go into it because they have a passion for investigating things, answering questions, and because they see big problems that they want to help solve.
The reason the messaging changed was precisely because “it will get a few °C hotter” was not nuanced enough. While true, it neither laid out the actual problems (extremes get more extreme, weather gets less predictable, fires become more common) nor looked true to laymen (“but it’s cold out now!”).
> First it was everything will get hotter, then it was the climate will change, now it’s weather events will get more spectacular.
The problem was thinking people cared about the first two. They’re both true but only “every few years a natural disaster will wipe a town off the map” seems to get people interested.
> humans, and human crops and animals rely on boring predictable weather that they evolved for.
Do they though? Or are large variations in weather over the course of a century actually really normal, and mother nature is just a cruel mistress that is constantly decimating populations and then giving them just enough reprieve to recover before doing it again? It's really hard for me to have any confidence in "climate science" because I see how horribly wrong other areas of science are _all the time_ and the only way to be proven wrong in climate science is to wait for decades or centuries to see what happens.
Except we have excellent geological records on the matter so we know what weather was like mostly across periods. This isn’t really something we have been wrong on for a while. Ofcourse we can always be proven otherwise..
This is also backed by mass extinction events being relatively rare.
It is the fourth time it has gone in the last six years, having only melted nine times in the past 300 years. Mr Cameron said climate change was a likely factor.
I have lived in Scotland for the past twenty years. A few years ago, we had by far the worst snow I have ever seen here. I live in a coastal area that usually doesn't get snow, we had 12ft high drifts and everything shut down for a few days (iirc, it was 2018). There has been no noticeable difference in the frequency of snow either (it usually doesn't snow at all now, and is usually worst in late January/February...I don't know what people think Scotland is, we have a ski slope and in the 90s it was often not open in winter because there was no snow, the weather here is fairly temperate).
Attributing one thing to climate change is difficult.
What if I told you that people suck at statistics and that temperatures have this weird thing called "variance"--meaning the average can increase and yet you still get outliers that are memorable, in both directions, and thus your cognitive biases don't give you an accurate picture of change?
And what if I told you that I studied statistics at university (my UG is in economic history) and that your cognitive bias about the statistics knowledge of people you don't know isn't interesting to anyone but you.
If you read more closely (perhaps spend less time reading statistics textbooks, and more time working on your comprehension), you will also notice that I mentioned specifically that there has been no noticeable change in frequency over the time that I lived here.
You may think you are an expert on stats and cognitive biases of people you have never met...are you also an expert on the local weather conditions of central Scotland? My guy, no-one asked, next time you are thinking about doing this, stop. Write it down in your feelings journal, your views are significantly less interesting than you think.
I’d tell you that you should read a book called “How to Win Friends and Influence People” so that you could make your important point in a way that would possibly be received, rather than with an arrogant sarcasm that has the opposite effect.
It's not 'one thing', it's a series of measurements over time.
> "Since the late 1970's there has been a significant reduction in the average number of days with snow lying, based on a sample of climatological stations at altitudes between 100m and 400m. The average rate of change has been 12 days per decade, which has been associated with changes in mean temperature during the winter months. The average number of days with snow lying across Scotland as a whole during the winter (November to April) is reduced by 9 days for every 1.0oC increase in mean temperature."
That's from a paper published in 2000, which is useful to look at because it makes projections for avg time periods (30-yr means) centered on 2020, 2050, and 2080.
These projections from 2000 are kind of interesting. We don't seem to be in the absolute worst-case projection (current snow loss in the Alps appears to be 77%, not 100%, for example [1]):
> "Whetton et al. (1996) have used GCM’s to simulate changes in snow cover in the Australian Alps using a mass balance approach (snowfall less ablation). They conclude that in a worst-case scenario, all snow will have disappeared from the Alps by the 2020’s. Barringer (1996) translates snow cover into altitude of snowlines which, under a best case scenario, retreat upwards at the rate of 10m per decade, rising to 52m per decade in a worst case scenario. Hantel et al. (2000) translate incremental temperature changes into numbers of snow days which, at lower altitudes, would mean a reduction of 31 days in winter and 42 days in spring for a temperature increase of 1oC."
[0] CLIMATE CHANGE AND CHANGING PATTERNS OF SNOWFALL IN SCOTLAND
J Harrison, S Winterbottom - 2000
What (if anything) to do about this reality is a matter of debate, but there's no mistake that steady global warming is taking place, fairly in line with projections dating back several decades at least.
It hasn't. That is what I am saying. People think it snows all the time here, it doesn't. I have lived here for 20 years, my parents lived here for decades before, the weather is largely the same (the UK has been getting warmer for about a century and a half, so the Thames used to freeze over but that stopped a long time before climate change started). This doesn't mean that climate change is or is not happening: Scotland is a tiny country surrounded by water, so the weather here tends to be unusual. In Edinburgh, for example, it will never snow in Leith but you go up to the Braids (maybe ten miles away), and there will be six foot deep drifts. Because the country is so small and so much is close to the coast, the weather is unusual.
So you're saying that you think that they are lying, and falsifying weather information? Do you think they came up with this plan 300 years ago when they started recording?
This is a report about a thing that is happening. You can see it as a sign of something else, you can see it as not necessarily a sign of something else. To refuse to see it at all, however, is concerning.
I am glad you are concerned about me. You come across as a very sensitive person, suggesting (for some reason that is unclear to me, but presumably clear to a very intuitive person like yourself) that I believe there is a 300-yr old conspiracy theory to falsify weather "information"? I don't think I actually mentioned anything about the article, I mentioned no views about climate change at all, no-one asked.
All I pointed out was that the guy saying Scotland was suddenly "snow-free" had obviously not been to Scotland. Because it doesn't actually snow here very often, people just think it does. Take a deep breath. Not everything is an anti-climate change conspiracy.
> the UK has been getting warmer for about a century and a half
Are you not contradicting yourself?
Not sure who thinks it snows in Scotland all the time either? Certainly known more for its rain I'd say. I would agree Scotland has a tendency for unusual micro-climates. I do think the measurement of frequency of snowless days in Scotland is a reasonable bellwether for climate change indicators given the details provided.
To give another observation of possible indicators of climate change effects in Scotland I have lived in a coastal town in Scotland for a little over a decade and there are strong indicators of increasing coastal erosion which I would attribute to the rising sea-levels brought about by climate change.
Are you trying to make an argument that climate change isn't real or just not happy with the reporting of this event? It's not clear to me what your actual point is.
Not if you are familiar with the climate history of the UK. The reason why warming started a century and a half ago is not the reason it is warming now.
> Not sure who thinks it snows in Scotland all the time either?
The guy who I replied to who said it was unusual that it wasn't snowing in Scotland. I don't know what to tell you.
I will offer an alternative statistic for climate change: temperature change. I think it will catch on, but you can continue with your thing.
> It's not clear to me what your actual point is.
Because you had in your head when you replied to my comment that I must be a climate-change denier. So you are now very confused when you wrote your comment, and then looked at what I said and then realised that at no point did I mention anything about climate change. You may know this is something that happens to people now: you talk about something related to a cause de jour, and the person will think everything you are saying is connected to cause de jour.
> The guy who I replied to who said it was unusual that it wasn't snowing in Scotland. I don't know what to tell you
Still can't see anyone replying to you with that
> Because you had in your head when you replied to my comment that I must be a climate-change denier....
I had it in my head it wasn't clear what point you are actually making about the original article as much of what you state is, at best, personal experience and little else. Not that that can't add to a discussion to some degree However, I'm still none the wiser but will leave it at that as don't believe this is worth pursuing and will just become (more) circular.
Yes, it was part of the Little Ice Age. People actually used to skate and hold markets on the Thames, it was frozen solid (the last such market was held in the early 19th century, and the last full freeze was in the early 1960s).
Thoroughly confusing for climate-change deniers ofc (and climate-change truthers it seems). But, as I said, it really stopped happening in the mid-19th century.
People know Scotland has had 9 times that the last snow has melted before fresh snow falls in the last 300 years, and four of those were in the last six years.
I have lived in Scotland over 50 years being born here.
There has been a noticeable change in climate over that time period which would make me more likely to agree with the data being presented here is meaningful.
Of course Scotland has a mild climate in places where people live, probably comparable to coastal Norway. However, the article discusses Scotland being snow-free even in the mountains where it is rare that the snow melts all the way.
Right, and my issue is that people are exceedingly eager to read their own opinions into random events. This man goes up a hill and looks around for snow, apparently they have been doing this for 300 years...are you aware that the UK doesn't have weather statistics that old?
I would think that the evidence for climate change is reasonably strong given the statistics showing temperatures are changing and the science explaining how this is happening...unfortunately, there is a large contingent of humanity who insist on reading climate change in every event. I have a guy, presumably from the US, who is informing me with great authority about what the weather is like near my house...okay, can't believe I am such a dirty climate change denier for observing that this guy's totally unscientific musings aren't useful (if you didn't know the BBC churns out stories like this all day, every day...man falls over? Climate change. Man coughs loudly in doctor's surgery? Climate change again).
>Attributing one thing to climate change is difficult.
This title is pretty terrible when you consider the article.
The Sphinx, in the Cairngorms, which is historically the longest-lasting patch of snow in the UK, has melted.
The Sphinx, on remote Braeriach, a 1,296m (4,252ft) Munro, has melted away more frequently in the last 18 years.
According to records, it previously melted fully in 1933, 1959, 1996, 2003, 2006, 2017, 2018, 2021 and now 2022.
Before 1933, it is thought to have last melted completely in the 1700s.
The Scottish Mountaineering Club began noting the fortunes of the patch in the 1840s and more recently scientists and ecologists have gathered information.
It's really about the longest lasting patch of snow in Scotland melting. I guess that is where they get "Scotland is snow free". And the mountaineering club has been making observations since 1840.
So this is really around 180 years of observations. All the melts since they started observations occurred in the last 89 years and the period between melts has been getting shorter and shorter.
I would like the glaciers and iceshelves in the polar regions to stay where they are rather than causing a rise in Ocean levels that in turn displaces hundreds of millions of people.
Scotland's snow cover is an indicator of what's happening in this planet
The thing is, it happens very slowly. Over many decades and even centuries. It’s not like within a couple years suddenly all the coasts move. Not even in the most aggressive models which are likely wrong anyhow.
It’s a slow and gradual process which means we can actively make progress against it.
Israel doesn’t seem to agree with your assessment, they say that they don’t have anything in place for the current speed… what about other more lowlying areas?
I think you’re severely underestimating the chaos, war, and suffering that hundreds of millions of people moving will cause. But if that’s not enough - ecosystems will collapse causing outbreaks of pests that would normally be kept in check, water will become scarcer and aquifers will empty, all of which will result in food shortages and famines.
As an example, we could see an end to seafood in our lifetime. It’s not outside the realm of possible - ocean acidification is one of the consequences of increased co2, and it’s already killing off shellfish. It’s unclear how far out into the food web a lack of shellfish would cascade. Ocean scientists talk about a world where the oceans are full of jellyfish and not much else. I’ve eaten jellyfish - it’s not good.
I don't see that people moving further inlands over the span of several decades is going to cause dramatic conflict, but feel free to catastrophize, otherwise climate change would be very boring.
> As an example, we could see an end to seafood in our lifetime.
It’s not only people moving further inland. It’s people moving from places that are hot now, and unlivable hot soon. And the movement will continue for several decades, but i wouldn’t be shocked to see a hundred million people move in one year before 2050. Minimize it all you want, it’s going to happen and you will be impacted by it if you live long enough to see it.
As for your snarky “citation needed” - this is all easily googlable stuff. I’d start with understanding what “trophic collapse” means.
> Minimize it all you want, it’s going to happen and you will be impacted by it if you live long enough to see it.
My body is ready.
> I’d start with understanding what “trophic collapse” means.
I understand what it means. What I'm asking for is a credible source that predicts how this would happen. None of your sources come close. Let's see...
A dire revenue warning for the non-farmed shellfish industry:
"Sarah Cooley studies the socioeconomic impacts of altered oceans at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. She and other researchers project acidification could reduce U.S. shellfish harvests by as much as 25 percent over the next 50 years."
Jellyfish Apocalypse? Postponed until further notice:
"Many citations of this paper assume that she found conclusive proof that the jelly apocalypse was happening. This dangerously bad science got so out of hand that during a conference in 2011, over half the scientists in attendance said that the jelly apocalypse is happening. Mills herself was at the event, and she voted no. Since then, many scientists have gone over the data with a fine toothcomb and concluded that the data could be misinterpreted as an increase in jelly numbers. Marina Sanz-Martin was one of these scientists, and she concluded that others had manipulated the data to get funding."
There's no mention of the climate in this article, at all. Rather...
"The oceans are stretched, and certain fish species are approaching depletion. Leading scientists project that if we continue to fish this way, without allowing our oceans time to recover, our oceans could become virtual deserts by 2050"
Regarding your last reference on jellyfish, the author is "[a] Journalist passionate about cutting edge technology, space and fighting climate change."
A quote:
For a long time the scientific consensus was that we are causing a jelly Armageddon and that we need to stop it before our oceans’ ecosystems collapse. Scientists have suggested we change our eating habits and start fishing and eating jellies. Some even thought we should geoengineer the ocean to have more nutrients and oxygen so that the jelly’s predators could grow in number to fight off the hordes of these squishy devils. In his incredible documentary ‘Blue Planet II’, David Attenborough suggested that we should set aside a third of the world’s oceans as marine reserves, where human activity is banned, to help fish stocks recover and to rebalance the ecosystems.
So, an interesting article, but obviously alarmist.
Not sure which part of that quote means it shouldn't be taken seriously. I sure wish the person yelling "fire" in this crowded theater that's quickly filling with smoke wasn't so alarmist.
The UN published a report[1] estimating that 17% of the people of Bangladesh will have to relocate by 2030. Bangladesh has a population of 165 million and is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, so this seems problematic to me.
edit: upon closer reading, they meant 17% will have to relocate eventually. "Only" 3 to 10 million internal migrants in Bangladesh over the next 40 years. Still seems pretty bad.
First off, that is a huge problem as it leads to saltwater innundation of major rivers in breadbasket regions.
But there are many other effects to expect. Wet bulb too high, temperatures too high for crops to survive (only needs to be a few days a year), droughts that destroy crops, floods that destroy crops and wash away top soil, reduction in glaciers drying up rivers that provide water to ... crops.
If you salt the earth where the majority of food for a species grows. Then you can expect a large reduction in the population of that species.
But, if the climate is warmer, we would live more comfortably, not to forget that we could grow more food.
I'm basically saying, change in itself is not a terrible occurrence - there are pros and cons. Stasis or no change, is arguably worse, imo. Must we keep things the same, or can we develop our adaptability? With all our tech, we should be able to manage things better than ever, if we want.
The climate being warmer on average is perhaps better understood as the climate being more energetic. More heat energy in the atmosphere means more and stronger storms, greater flooding, heat waves, and so on. It's not just that things are bit more comfortable now.
We can't grow more food when one food growing area is innundated or torn up by hurricanes while another is crushed by drought.
The fact that change in the abstract can be good or bad doesn't mean specific changes don't make things worse. But maybe more importantly, the rate of change makes a huge difference. If change happens too rapidly, as human driven climate change seems to be, you don't have time to sufficiently adapt to take advantage of the new pros or offset the cons.
Climate change will make a lot of places less habitable while making some places more so. Great, it balances out, right? Except most people live in the places that are habitable now, and if the habitable areas change overnight (in relative terms), billions of people are going to suddenly be living in the wrong places. Natural climate change over tens of thousands of years would give populations plenty of time to migrate, as has happened in the past. Human driven climate change over 100 years will not.
But have you seen anything that resembles a rapid change?
Putting aside the media alarmists, I have seen nothing that can't be explained as change. The beaches of my childhood are still there at the same height etc. Yes there have been fires (that I put down to forest mismanagement) and floods which will occur if you build on flood plains and if you cut down trees.
So, I don't see rapid change.
You should re watch al gore's original inconvenient truth film and see how well that has aged. He sounds like the proverbial boy who shouting fire in the cinema. Given his eco-investments, his actions are really better explained as a marketing exercise to will line his pockets.
This comment is profoundly ignorant of the nature of anthropogenic climate change. It doesn't mean that "things will get warmer and happier for everyone."
It means severe water shortages, mass migration of climate refugees, xenophobia and the resulting political turmoil, huge increases in lung cancer from wildfire smoke, frequent flooding, destruction of infrastructure to the tune of billions of dollars, mass extinction of species, etc.
We don't even know what happens when certain feedback loops get triggered and a flywheel accelerant effect begins.
Fair enough, but most people prefer a warmer climate, where it is easier to live, do outdoors pursuits, grow food, use less resources (for heating). But each to their own!
It's an indication of what is happening in Scotland. Scotland would be very sensitive to small changes in the Gulf Stream, which are chaotic in nature.
As far as the planet goes, the global troposphere's temperature has increased by only about 0.52C over the last forty years, as measured by satellite.[0]
We are still coming out of both a major ice age, from 15,000 years ago, and a minor ice age, from 250 years ago, so some warming is expected. These changes are largely due to the Earth's orbit and inclination, and possibly to changes in the Sun's activity. The Earth is currently in a cold period compared to the historical record, though at times in the remote past the oceans have frozen almost completely.[1]
There is always regional climate change. Deserts become wetter, then drier. The North Pole warms more rapidly than the South Pole, and then the opposite occurs.
What you are describing is not "climate change" but "climate staying the same".
Climate change refers to the climate moving in to a new state, not the usual oscillation between ice-ages and interglacials which is a state the climate has been in during the whole period humans existed (actually upright apes of all kinds, modern humans haven't been around that long anyway).
Your first link is a well known climate denialist who also believes in other bunk such as intelligent design.
Roy Spencer is skeptical about the more extreme climate predictions that arise from the computer models.
If you read his work, you'll find out that he is a climate "luke-warmer" (like me): he believes that the global climate is gradually warming, but it's not yet clear how much of a part we humans actually play, or that the observed warming is detrimental.
Spencer is responsible for making actual satellite temperature measurements:
Before becoming a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2001, he was a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, where he and Dr. John Christy received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for their global temperature monitoring work with satellites. Dr. Spencer’s work with NASA continues as the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite.
"Climate Change" has been the new term for "Global Warming" for some time now. It is used because it's more flexible - most any change can be reported in an alarmist way. If you want to discuss the greening of the Sahara, that's local climate change. If you want to discuss the global warming of the troposphere, possibly due to increased global levels of CO2, that's "Global Warming", but "Lets call that Climate Change now". All the international concern and science activity is about the latter, not local climate change.
I'm pointing out that the Global Warming forecasts are based on a large number of computer models, not on measurements of actual global reality. You'll notice that the IPCC is gradually abandoning its most extreme models, since their predictions have not actually occurred. It appears that the computer models and reality will converge at around a 1.3C per century increase, starting from 1980.
It won't just be very unpleasant, but it will have serious ramifications on the world's food supply if growing seasons are dramatically shortened and viable ranges for crops shift south by a large amount.
The parts of Russia where they grow most of the food is in Europe and would also be affected by the Gulf Stream weakening or halting. Likewise so would Greenland, which will not be good for agriculture anyway, even with serious warming.
I think that's what they mean. AFAIK the entire UK is north of the Canadian border. The people, economy, infrastructure and natural environment are nowhere near ready to deal with a Canadian-style winter.
The Gulf Stream is an ocean current than brings warmth from the Gulf of New Mexico up the US's coastline and across the Atlantic to western Europe. It's estimated to have a several-degree-C warming effect.
The Gulf Stream doesn't seem to be slowing down, so a direct temperature-related change isn't really a concern, but what still is is the ice melt from Greenland - that's mostly freshwater and it getting dumped into the Atlantic could still disrupt it.
Anyone that doesn't believe the climate is changing should be forced to spend quality time in the north. Up in the Yukon and AK the weather is vastly different than it was only 10 years ago, and I'm told even more different than it was 40 years ago.
I lived in the Yukon for just 4 years and it changed dramatically during that time. Each year you can see the glaciers getting smaller, the rivers not freezing as much, warm stretches coming in Jan when they never used to.
the problem with that is just how crazy people can be. last i heard, in a conversation with another human. is that there's this huge government and media conspiracy to cover up the 100,000 dead in Florida from Ian flooding.
I don't know what it's like down south in Alaska, but up here around 58°N the weather is different from what it was like ten years ago but much the same as it was 30 years ago.
My view is the climate is changing, and it's either too late or we lack the ability to control the climate. Therefore, we must work with what we have and prepare for new weather and new local climate systems. Of interest:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-w...
> It's never too late to stop making things worse.
I don't know, we could already be stuck in a positive feedback loop with no hope of reversing the trend until the pendulum swings back in another 10k years. That's the difficulty with climate science, there are so many variables and the system is so complex that analysis is extremely difficult.
EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not saying we can't do ANY analysis or that we can't see the larger trends... just that the devil is in the details and we can't predict exactly what's going to happen or when.
There are large costs associated with changing what we're doing and in absence of being able to actually control the climate, those resources would be better spent on dealing with the outcome.
If you're standing downhill from an avalanche that you set off when you clapped your hands, making sure no one claps will not be your chief concern.
It seem we do have the ability to control the climate, because that's what we're doing. So, we can stop making it worse which is good!
But we're definitely going to have to adapt because even if we stop it we've already changed things somewhat. The question is who, where, how much. And how much the adaptation will cost, and whether people can afford it, and and and.
How exactly is the climate worse today? The planet is greener than ever. Warming isn't intrinsically bad, as people are more likely to die from cold rather than heat.
Perhaps for you it's fine. For low lying states it's not good. Turns out that's Florida too. Australia had to add levels to their fire danger charts. etc, etc... look, on the off chance that your remark was in good faith and you're really interested in an answer, try the recent Chatham House report [1], or the IPCC ones, or the US national assessment (forgot the name - google it for me will ya?)
[1]https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/09/climate-change-risk-ass..., or the Potsdam Institute ones, to scratch the surface. You know, do your own research.
Those are projections for the future. The implications of the GP was that the climate is worse today already. Where's the evidence for that? It's warmer, of course, but that doesn't imply "worse".
This is your regular reminder that climate change means moving the distribution; outliers on the hot ('snow-free') side get more common and outliers on the cold ('big snow') side get less common.
Maybe I'm overanalyzing, but some of the terminology in the article is weird. Mr. Cameron is described as a snow expert who does research. However he says he's not an academic or climate scientist. Is he just a humble guy? Or is BBC referring to his tweets as his research projects?
"Early one morning in May 1983, nine-year-old Iain Cameron looked out of the living room window and glimpsed a shining patch of brilliant white on distant Ben Lomond. This sparked a fascination with snow patches that would become a life’s work. A citizen scientist, Iain has written more than twenty scientific papers for the Royal Meteorological Society’s Weather journal; and he is the co-author of Cool Britannia (2010), a book examining the history of snow patches in Britain during the Little Ice Age. Iain’s work has been featured in the Guardian, the Independent and the Sunday Times, and he is a regular contributor to the Times and the BBC. He has appeared on Winterwatch and Countryfile and in numerous features on BBC Radio Scotland. He lives in Stirling and spends many weekends in the Scottish Highlands carrying out detailed fieldwork.
"
`Happy' memories of hiking in the Cairngorms, not in winter, crossing a snow patch, losing any grip on it, sliding down, with, thankfully, my father just below to catch me (it was steep, and stretching a long way below).
I don't think it was this snow patch, but it was in the same area of the Cairngorms.
I mean, we probably can't prevent it getting worse because of the 10-20 year lead time on CO2/temperature, we're locked in to that.
But if we act immediately now, we can reduce the rate at which things continue to get worse in a couple of decades time.
And even if the situation is runaway, that would reduce how rapidly things run out of control.
Efforts to do that are probably going to have a much bigger effect than a lot of adaptations people are talking about, since some of the changes we're in for are so vast that there isn't going to be much avoiding them.
While climate change is going to have some profound and devastating effects, it's not on that timescale. If anything, when hard times hit, you'll regret having less of a financial cushion.
I think you are probably right about that. But I am making assumptions about GPs financial situation.
It is really an individual choice whether you want that financial cushion in the future, or you'd rather enjoy your life now.
I think there's a good chance, especially if you're in a lower financial bracket, that whatever you'd put in to a 401(k) might end up having no real benefit for you (due to inflation, financial collapse, or just that the value returned is too small or too late to make a difference in meaningful life outcomes for you).
It doesn't necessarily mean GP is imagining a sudden crashing collapse or nuclear war in 2030 or something.
Yes, we can and it is done. Accurate thermometers have been avaiable for over 200 years and in many places systematic temperature measurements were done. Of course, these measurements are influenced by local weather events, but when combined internationally, result in highly accurate data, very clearly showing the climate change.
But is is always interesting to add independent data sources which also confirm the temperature measurements.
You are correct about thermometers -- we
are really good at measuring temperatures.
Early in my career I was at the NBS, now
NIST, and our lab routinely measured
temperatures to within 0.01 C.
And, right, global warming needs to be
evaluated by the average of a lot of
credible, accurate measurements of
temperature with thermometers or, now,
with satellites. A satellite in a polar
orbit might be able to get a good estimate
of average global temperature.
But what the article has is some pictures
of some snow in some place in Scotland.
And I should add, with temperatures over
time, there will be a probability
distribution with long tails of events
that do occur but have low probability.
Soooo, each year we can look around the
world and see some events from one of the
long tails, maybe in Scotland, Alaska,
Brazil, Nevada, .... Those events are to
be expected and are not good evidence of
anything about global warming. Or maybe
with a lot of global warming, some snow in
Scotland would melt. But that some snow
in Scotland melted is very weak or no good
evidence of global warming.
I see a lot of that, e.g., a claim that
the cruise ship season is now longer
because of fewer ice bergs because of
global warming.
And for each hurricane or tornado, I see
claims that those events are evidence of
climate change and, thus, a "climate
crisis".
But here is what I do not see, have so far
never seen, have looked and can't find --
reports of average global temperatures,
over time with good details on how the
measurements were made, who made them,
where the details are that I can look up
and check, from credible sources.
Here is some more that I do see:
(1) There was Al Gore's movie. He showed
a graph of temperature and CO2
concentrations from 800,000 years of ice
core data. He said that we should notice
that the temperature and CO2 "went up and
down together". Yup, they did. From that
he concluded that CO2 caused the warming
in the 800,000 year ice or data.
But, directly from the Gore's graph:
(A) When temperatures started to increase,
CO2 concentrations were low, not high.
So, something made the temperatures go up,
but it wasn't high CO2 concentrations.
(B) CO2 concentrations did go up but about
800 years AFTER the temperatures went up.
So, a good guess is that the CO2 went up
because the higher temperatures, from
whatever cause, at least initially NOT
CO2, caused more biological activity.
(C) Some thousands of years later,
temperatures fell and we got a lot of ice.
When the temperatures started down, CO2
concentrations were high, not low.
Something made the temperatures fall, but
it wasn't low CO2.
One could argue from Gore's graph that CO2
caused cooling. His graph certainly does
not support a claim that CO2 caused
warming. Looks to me like Gore was not
able to read his graph.
Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Its
absorption spectrum is at
So, CO2 absorbs in three narrow bands out
in the infrared. The standard explanation
is that the bands are for bending,
stretching, and twisting of the molecule.
But CO2 is transparent to visible light --
exhale or pop open a brewski and observe
that the CO2 does not cast a shadow. So,
the common claim repeated by the newsies
that CO2 absorbs sunlight is not really
correct. Instead, of course, the sunlight
warms the surface which as in Planck's
black body radiation theory radiates, and
radiates mostly out in the infrared.
There CO2 absorbs in the three narrow
bands. Then, of course, maybe soon the
molecule's energy level falls back and the
infrared is radiated again. Or the more
rapidly vibrating CO2 molecule bumps into
some other molecule and creates some
warming. Then ..., the effect on global
temperature is not easy to calculate.
(2) We had the Medieval Warm period.
There are no credible claims that the
cause was CO2 from humans. So, global
temperatures go up and down for reasons
other than CO2 from humans or CO2 at all.
(3) For 100+ years, we had the Little Ice
Age. At least much of Europe and the US
were significantly colder. Something
caused the lower temperatures, but it
wasn't lower CO2.
(4) It is not clear when we came out of
the Little Ice Age. Maybe that was 1890,
1900, 1910, 1920 -- tough to know. We can
guess that the Little Ice Age cooled the
oceans, and they are deep, often 3-7 miles
deep, and, we can guess, can take a long
time to warm up. In the early 1900s,
there was some warming. CO2 does not look
like the cause. Pulling out of the last
of the Little Ice Age looks like a better
explanation.
(5) We had some cooling from 1945 to 1970.
Then we also had, although I'd like to see
the actual numbers, often missing in this
whole subject, more CO2 from WWII and the
postwar economic boom. So, here we had
some cooling, while we had more CO2.
Again we could argue that CO2 can cause
cooling. Again, just from the
observational data, it is tough to argue
that CO2 can cause warming.
Net: So far from the more credible
observational data, (1)-(5) above, I see
no credible evidence that CO2 from any
source, humans or otherwise, has ever
caused significant warming.
(6) There were some dozens of studies,
maybe attempts at serious work, to
calculate, model, whatever, to estimate
the effect of CO2 on global temperatures.
The studies are summarized in the now
apparently well known, maybe famous, graph
at
Results: All of the studies that
predicted significant warming were proved
wrong: The times of the predicted warming
came and went years ago with no credible
evidence of the predicted warming.
A lot of the models were junk. I question
the credibility, even the honesty, of the
models of the effects of CO2.
Net, so far I see no credible evidence
that CO2 from human sources has had, is
having, or will have a significant effect
on global temperatures. No, none, nichts,
nil, nada, zip, zilch, zero. The
alarmists have shouted "wolf" way too
often and now have no credibility. Good
science can predict and find the Higgs
Boson as predicted, but the alarmists are
just unable and/or unwilling competently
to model the effects of CO2.
Instead of good science, credible
evidence, a "climate crisis", I see a hoax
and a scam, a global political movement
after money and power. That is a MUCH
more credible explanation than any
science about CO2.
So, back to the snows of Scotland: This
time it was Scotland. Next time it might
be some part of the Grand Tetons,
something in New Zealand, .... It's a big
world. If look carefully, each year
should be able to find somewhere a rare
event out in the tail of the probability
distribution. So, here, that upset some
people, I merely asked for temperature
measured with a thermometer! That is, I
want to see global temperatures measured
with thermometers or maybe some accurate
satellites and not with just pictures from
some valley in Scotland.
From page 76 of
Susan Milbrath, 'Star Gods of the Maya:
Astronomy in Art, Folklore, and Calendars
(The Linda Schele Series in Maya and
Pre-Columbian Studies)', ISBN-13
978-0292752269, University of Texas Press,
2000.
there is
"Indeed, blood sacrifice is required for
the sun to move, according to Aztec
cosmology (Durian 1971:179; Sahaguin
Sooooo, they killed people, poured their
blood on a rock, and wonder of wonders,
the sun kept moving across the sky.
If we cut way back on CO2, we can expect,
wonder of wonders, we won't get the
predicted Hudson River water level rising
to cover the NYC West Side Highway.
There are some people who really like to
push the claim of a "climate crisis".
The UN and their IPCC supported efforts to
transfer big bucks from the rich countries
to the poor ones.
People selling solar panels and wind
turbines got a lot of business.
People selling electric cars got a lot of
subsidies.
A lot of newsies got a lot of shocking
headlines, fears of disasters, standard in
the news business, eyeballs, and ad
revenue.
Some politicians got a lot of power and
some constituents eager to make political
donations.
And some Maya High Priests got power?
The predicted "hockey stick"!!!! Where's
the hockey stick????? There's zero
credibility.
Right, I conclude that the "climate
crisis" is not about CO2 at all, or
temperature, but about money and power.
Me, nope, I don't like it.
You are mixing a lot of things in your post, I won't go into all details. But long term precise temperature measurements exist, they are the basis of all work about global warming. I am sure you can find them quickly if you browse the corresponding scientific literature.
And of course there are plenty of calculations about the warming effect of CO2. Arrhenius published early calculations in 1874. And that directly leads us to the harming effect of human caused emissions onto the global climate. Humanity has increased the CO2 content in the atmosphere by 50%. Within 200 years, most in the last 50. Which already has caused a significant warming, which is very well documented. There is plenty of rock solid science behind this.
> Humanity has increased the CO2 content
in the atmosphere by 50%. Within 200
years, most in the last 50. Which already
has caused a significant warming, which is
very well documented. There is plenty of
rock solid science behind this.
Apparently humans have increased the
concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Sure. Okay. Fine. That data is easy to
find and is credible.
Problem is, as I argued, with current
science that change in CO2 does not
necessarily mean a change in temperature.
Apparently the warming effect of CO2 is
just too small to detect.
Again, yet again, over again, once again,
one more time, (A) as I explained in
detail, Al Gore badly misread the data in
his graph and showed no evidence that CO2
had any effect, warming or cooling on the
climate, (B) in the Medieval warm period
and the Little Ice Age, we had significant
warming/cooling without a role for CO2,
(C) the warming early in the 1900s was
likely from the end of the Little Ice Age
and not from human sources of CO2, another
case of temperature changes not caused by
human CO2, (D) with the CO2 from WWII and
the postwar boom, we had significant
cooling from 1945 to 1970, a tough problem
for the alarmists' arguments, (E) as in
the famous reference I gave there were
many studies, models, calculations
evaluating the effects of CO2, and ALL the
studies that predicted significant
warming, including the "hockey stick",
were badly wrong, a real shot in the gut
of all modeling of the effects of CO2
that predict warming from human sources of
CO2, (F) from the failed predictions of
the modeling efforts, the science of
global warming has lost its credibility,
(G) similarly, from the failed
predictions, the UN and IPCC have no
credibility.
The alarmists are stuck: (i) the
empirical evidence from the 800,000 years
of ice core data, the Medieval Warm
period, the Little Ice Age, and the the
last 120 years do not support any claims
of human sources of CO2 causing
significant warming. (ii) As in the
famous reference I gave, the modeling
efforts lack all credibility. (iii) As I
explained, the UN and its IPCC are not
credible sources of science.
Since ALL the modeling efforts that
predicted significant warming failed,
predictions of temperature increases in
2050, 2100, etc. are just silly talk.
Actually, the significant increase in CO2
concentration with NO credible evidence of
significant warming is good evidence that
the warming effect of CO2 is just tiny,
too small to observe.
Lots of alarmists say there is lots of
data showing the significant warming
effects of CO2, but I've never seen a
credible reference, graph, data set, etc.
showing that. Instead I see a lot of
stories like the snow in Scotland.
But long ago I carefully studied the
highly credible
Committee on Surface Temperature
Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years,
National Research Council ISBN:
0-309-66264-8, 196 pages, 7 x 10, (2006)
Sorry, the solid, objective science that
human CO2 has caused, is causing, or will
cause significant warming just is not easy
enough to find or not there.
Again, net, so far, as best as I can tell
from years of paying attention, there is
no credible evidence that CO2 from human
sources has caused, is causing, or will
cause significant global warming.
The credible evidence just is NOT there.
Politics, stories, worries, claims -- lots
of those. Credible evidence -- no.
If you have some credible evidence, then
trot it out. Your just saying I can find
the evidence is not good enough. If the
alarmists want to make their case, then
they need to make public and easy to find,
as easy to find as the story about the
snows in Scotland, credible evidence of
warming.
That's why in my first post I begged for
evidence from THERMOMETERS and not just
some story about Scotland.
The alarmists have to hurry because there
are some cycles in the weather, e.g., from
the 11 year cycles of sun spots, El Nino
episodes, etc. that complicate the
analysis.
Meanwhile, to me the alarmism is a hoax
and a scam to get money and power. It's
clear that a lot of money and power are
involved. And the pursuit of money and
power are MUCH better explanations for the
alarmism than any credible science about
CO2.
To get the science why more CO2 means more heat, look no further than Arrhenius, he described and calculated the phenomenum in the late 19th century. That is very basic and confirmed physics.
Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas. I gave the reference to its absorption spectrum. From that, it causes some warming. And that is "very basic and confirmed physics". But that alone is, for practice, meaningless. Instead, the crucial question is, how much CO2 causes how much warming. Dozens of studies were done. No doubt the work of Arrhenius was considered.
I gave the famous reference to the results of the studies.
And the blunt fact is, all the studies, from Arrhenius and everything else, that predicted significant warming were wrong, badly wrong, because the times of the predicted warming came and went years ago with no evidence of the predicted warming or any significant warming at all.
And now we do have significantly more CO2, and still we see no significant warming.
Net, CO2 really is a greenhouse gas and really does cause warming, and that fact really is "very basic and confirmed physics", but the warming it causes is trivial, too small to be measured.
In particular, from Arrhenius, where is the "hockey stick", where is the warming? From 1945 to 1970, as CO2 was increasing, there was significant cooling. And since 1970, with more CO2, still there is no credible evidence of significant warming.
And as I explained in detail, the empirical evidence doesn't support that CO2 causes warming.
So, the (1) theory didn't work. And (2) the empirical data back 800,000 years doesn't support that CO2 causes warming. So, (1) and (2) both fail. Now the alarmists are left with no evidence, none, zero.
Well, there is an explanation for the studies that failed. See "The truth about global warming" with Patrick Michaels
at
In short the explanation is: The studies that predicted warming were working with climate models. They didn't have enough data so put in some adjustable parameters. Then they assumed that the warming in the early 1900s was caused by CO2 and adjusted their parameters to fit that early 1900s temperature data. Then they applied their resulting model to more recent levels of CO2. From that, they got predictions of significant warming. But those predictions failed -- the times of the predicted warming came and went years ago with no credible evidence of significant warming. E.g., the West Side Highway in NYC is still high and dry.
Of course, a big flaw was their assumption that the temperature changes of the early 1900s were caused by CO2 changes.
But by now from (1) and (2), we know better, know that the warming caused by CO2 is trivial, too small to be measured. In particular, the warming of the early 1900s was not caused by CO2. The likely cause was pulling out of the Little Ice Age.
Whatever, we have two rock solid points, (1) the models fail and (2) the empirical data doesn't support CO2 warming.
So, we are left with no credible evidence that human sources of CO2 have caused, are causing, or will cause significant warming. Indeed the evidence from the cooling of 1945 to 1970 and the current higher concentration of CO2 without significant warming is that the warming of CO2 is trivial, too small to be measured. So, there's no "climate crisis".
But plenty of people know this.
But we still have people screaming about the climate crisis. For them, the science is just an excuse. For them, they are not afraid of the warming. Instead, from the hoax, scam of the climate crisis, they are making money.
Soon the climate crisis will be over, will go the way of the ozone hole, low flow plumbing, and the hula hoop. People will give up on the climate crisis not because of science such as I am explaining but because of the reason for the screaming about the climate crisis -- nothing to do with science but just a way to make money. So, people are noticing how much the climate crisis is costing them and will stop the nonsense based on those costs.
Electric vehicles (EVs)? The batteries are too expensive, don't last very long, are too expensive to replace, present one heck of a fire hazard, take too long to charge, and need more electric power than the electric grid can supply. The EVs have many fewer moving parts so have some potential of being much cheaper than gasoline powered internal combustion engines but in practice so far are more expensive, not less. As the climate crisis fad fades, the subsidies for EVs will fade. Musk stands to lose a bundle.
You are still presenting a mix out of climate denial myths and lies. Global warming didn't "go away", it is ongoing and accelerating. As it is expected from the ever rising CO2 content in the atmosphere.
> Actually, the significant increase in
CO2 concentration with NO credible
evidence of significant warming is good
evidence that the warming effect of CO2 is
just tiny, too small to observe.
From your post, it looks like the
propaganda army to push the E. Bernays
narrative of a "climate crisis" via the
WWII German Nazi Minister of Propaganda
Dr. Josef Goebbels and his famous
"If you tell a lie often enough people
will believe it."
is out in force.
"I'm angry. Waste always makes me angry,
and that's what this is, sheer waste."
Intelligence and mental health do not seem to correlate.
Even very intelligent people can be susceptible to all kinds of cognitive distortions or disturbed thought patterns, even ones which seem very striking or bizarre to an outside observer.
Climate change is just one of those topics, I guess because it's so dire and large in scope, that it brings peoples psychological defence mechanisms right to the fore.
If you have some credible evidence that human sources of CO2 have caused, are causing, or will cause significant warming, then trot it out. I've been waiting for such evidence for years.
By now you have a big problem: We have had in recent years a significant increase in CO2 but without a significant increase in temperature. So, we have good evidence that the warming effect of CO2 is tiny, too small to detect.
As I argued, as has been made clear for years, the UN and its IPCC are political and not scientific. As I mentioned, one of their main goals is to arrange big bucks transfers from rich nations to poor ones.
In particular, the many predictions of significant warming by the alarmists including the IPCC never happened. E.g., years ago the West Side Highway of NYC was supposed to be under water. Nope.
I'm sure you can see this rationally and objectively.
I guess that doesn't speak to the imagination as much. See also: throwaway plastic straws being replaced with throwaway paper straws after some turtle/tortoise went viral with one up its nose. Not a bad thing, but not the best thing we could be doing either. People need examples, not dry numbers, too care en masse about any particular thing.
(Fyi I'm not the downvoter; I think it's a legitimate point to bring up.)
Unfortunately one side effect of climate change could be a change to the Gulf Stream. So global warming could cause the UK to become colder, as weird as that sounds
That is a myth, the Gulf steam does not contribute as much to warm European winters as you think. Global warming will make European winters warmer, not colder.
As someone who lives in the UK I've heard "reputable" mainstream media orgs talking about how global warming could / would disrupt the Gulf stream my whole my life. When I was young I remember even being taught this school and I was terrified because I thought if we didn't stop using cars we'd all freeze.
Now we're told the UK is getting hot because of climate change and you're telling me this was all just a myth?
As someone who's just a regular consumer of news it's so hard to trust anyone's predictions or reports on climate change.
ocean current predictions are one of the hardest to do. (there is way more uncertainty here than in global temps because to a first order, currents make 1 place hotter and another colder, averaging out to 0 on the global scale). the predictions you should trust most are global temperatures. you can get a pretty good estimate of those with pen and paper. sea level rise is also very solid. you can more or less replicate those with a laptop and a few hours of coding (the dominant mechinism is the ocean expanding because it's hotter). location specific effects have much more uncertainty. A good way to view them now is to not look at them as fixed, but a range of possible outcomes. the real harm from climate change isn't that any specific change will be catastrophic but that change in general on this scale is catastrophic. any reasonable set of changes of the scale climate change will cause will result in wars over water rights, increased intensity storms, hundreds of millions of people forced to leave their homes because they are underwater or unlivably hot or to dry to sustain their current population, mass extinctions (an estimated 7% of species that existed 10000 years ago are already extinct which is a rate somewhere between 100 and 10000 times the normal extinction rate).
The gulf stream may well stop (under some scenarios), but the effect of that on N. European climate will not be to make it like Siberia. It would more likely be like the Pacific Northwest. For example Seattle and Vancouver are at similar latitudes as Paris and London, and don't benefit from something like the Gulf stream.
Not so long ago they said that weather isn't climate change, that it required a 30 stint to be climate change.
Now, we seem to be told things are climate change over nine instances of a 300 year period, including once in the 1700s and told it's climate change.
The climate changes people, it has since the beginning. The real change now is there are billions of $$$ involved, and much power to be lauded over people because of it.
The "year without a summer" being a result of a volcano blowing off a kilometer of elevation and darkening the atmosphere with particulates. Yeah that's real comforting.
> According to records, it previously melted fully in 1933, 1959, 1996, 2003, 2006, 2017, 2018, 2021 and now 2022.
> Before 1933, it is thought to have last melted completely in the 1700s.
Just to be clear, Scotland is now far more populated and has more resources than it did in the 1700s. It's entirely possible that they were not able to regularly check the environment and records were not kept well then.
I think people really need to be careful of "X trend happens, therefore global warming". You could suggest that this _could_ be caused by global warming, but you shouldn't say that it definitely is. (The BBC article carefully avoids making the claim also.)
This year for example saw a heat wave in the UK, but at the same time, very cold weather in NZ (snow in the South island which is rare). So overall it appeared to be concentrated heat rather than an increase in global heat.
"Scotland is now far more populated and has more resources than it did in the 1700s"
I suspect the wilder parts of Scotland are actually far less populated than they used to be - the original populations of many areas being systematically removed by landowners in favour of sheep or deer:
Edit: Of course, as well as the clearances there is the fact that lots of remote spots just aren't sustainable as they used to be. Working out how to keep viable populations in remoter areas is something Scotland struggles with to this day.
This isn't the case. Less people are living there relative to the 1800s, but there are still a lot of people living there because so many people choose to retire there (the Islands are largely populated by the English now). And these places are still tourist destinations.
The actual wilder parts, like the Cairngorms, were never populated because you can't survive there. The clearances happened in areas that are still populated today, and had some degree of arable/pastoral activity.
Jesus, that Wiki page...you can tell it was written by a Yank with a fetish for Scotland.
No though, the Scottish population was not nomadic...obviously. Something like 75% of the country is just wasteland. The population lives in dense areas where agriculture was possible (70% of the population live in the central belt).
I don't think you need to explain the geography of Scotland to arethuza (who is, iirc, a Scot). And the article has a bit of flowery stuff about songs - but overall it's not saying Scottish people were nomadic, just that some people moved seasonally between a couple of locations with their livestock.
Yeah that's pretty much what I meant - shielings appear a lot on Ordnance Survey maps that I use when walking in Scotland (I'm slowly doing the Munros) - often at about 500m to 600m - perfectly pleasant in summer but not where you'd want to live in winter!
> I suspect the wilder parts of Scotland are actually far less populated than they used to be - the original populations of many areas being systematically removed by landowners in favour of sheep or deer:
Fair enough point on population. But I still believe that resources and even interest in recording such things may not have existed then.
In the 1700's the landowner was either likely well educated and living elsewhere, or poor and not able to read and write. The people spending the majority of their time in remote areas probably didn't have the resources to keep accurate records.
My point is, we are treating this really old data as if it is a ground truth. We need to take greater care.
> Working out how to keep viable populations in remoter areas is something Scotland struggles with to this day
Not just Scotland. I travelled in the Loire valley (France) recently and was struck by how dead many of the small villages and towns were.
Of course, if you get the answer wrong in the other direction, then you get local populations swamped by incomers, with affordable local housing replaced by multiple AirBNBs (e.g. parts of the SW of England).
UK has been so hot and dry this year that you are getting wild fires in England. WTF is wrong with people here are you guys so brainwashed by all the propaganda from oil and gas companies that you need to qualify every data point about global warming as maybe. In the last year we have got a huge number of data points from around the world showing effects of global warming but each article on hackernews about it top comment is a qualifying statement. Stop being ostriches and burying your head in the sand.
The problem is simple and not at all what you are implying. When you say that the cause of X is global warming/climate change without a qualifier, you are making an unverified statement which is likely true. Likely true is not definitely true and thus presenting it as definitely true is a lie. This causes distrust and is one of the reasons people are losing trust in the media.
In Canada for example, we are constantly told by our state funded media that hurricane Fiona was climate change. When the weather is atypical it is climate change. Absolutely zero care is given to the people who understand that atypical weather happens nearly every year if not every year. This is causing distrust.
We also have our PM. A man elected by name and haircut. He has done some good, but he has also publicly praised China's system of governance as being admirable[1].
Between these three points, people have reasons to be a sceptic. Climate change is also not the only topic like this in Canada and this problem isn't only in Canada.
I agree. It isn't reasonable to point to climate change as the cause of any single event. Once records start getting broken on a regular basis however, it is necessary to accept that as evidence.
Even the oil and gas companies realise they cant gaslight people anymore about the obvious signs of global warming so have changed the argument to global warming being man made or or not. Not that global warming is not happening.
People are slow to get the message. I still see every stage of denialism.
And the denialists at each stage never argue with each other, because none of them actually care about what's real. All they care about is the conclusion, that anybody who wants to do anything is an alarmist, and nothing in fact needs to be done.
No they aren't, this is actually the worst propaganda I see these days.
People believe climate change is real and they want to do more to fix it. Even in the most extreme countries (Indonesia, Nigeria, Saudi, etc.,) denialists are maybe 30% of the population. In all of the western world, including USA, public belief in a "climate emergency" is overwhelming in political terms - 65% even at the lower end like USA, the majority of people want to see more action. Far less supported and disliked legislation and policies have been rammed through political systems frequently.
The propaganda is that it's some podunk backwater holdouts who somehow wield this vast power over politicians who are the problem and that people still need to be "educated" about climate change. This is a lie. It's not. It's the politicians and their corporate owners who are the problem. And it's not just one side of politics either -- the other side also holds great power but conveniently decides to use it for much less popular actions and things rather than seriously addressing "the greatest threat to humanity". Doens't add up, does it? "The dumb stupid redneck" is a scapegoat. A divisive diversionary tactic used by your politician so you don't hold them accountable.
There may be overall support, but all of those stupid rednecks belong to the same political party. They make up a supermajority of that party, so even the ones who accept climate change won't vote for any action.
And since any action requires a supermajority, even when the redneck party does not control the government, action is impossible. Solutions to climate change are not trivial and there is reasonable disagreement even among those who aren't convinced it's all a Satanic hoax.
So there's plenty of blame to go around, but I'm going to start with 80 million delusional paranoiacs.
You say this and yet the party which claims to think climate change is the most important problem facing humanity, an existential threat to the planet, instead decided they'd pass some shitty healthcare legislation written by and for the healthcare industry that did little to improve healthcare, start a few more wars, etc. This is not the behavior of a people who believe what they told you.
You're being had. Honestly you can still hate "the rednecks" and recognize they've not been the ones preventing action this whole time.
I am not saying you are wrong, but people are definitely the problem too. There are so many denying the climate change or at least not really caring enough to cause any action. And fighting the fight against climate change by e.g. stopping the roll out of renewables. Why are people fighting wind generators, why are so few putting solar cells onto their house roofs? Why are people fighting against electric cars?
No, political corruption by fossil fuel industry is the problem. There is overwhelming public support for more action on climate change. Politicians who told you climate change was the most important problem consistently behave contrary to those claims. That's what it comes down to.
There are also a bunch of people who don't want it. They're not the problem though because at times when their politicians did not hold enough power to prevent action, there was still no action. Pretty simple test there.
If any segment of the public "need education" about the issue before something meaningful will be done, it is actually the voters who support climate change, and what they need to be educated on is the fact that their politicians are failing them and must be held to account.
It should be possible to advocate for solutions that more people actually want. Fifty years of preaching eco-asceticism hasn’t gotten us where we need to be.
Which is totally unrelated to fifty years of people declaring that absolutely nothing at all must be done, no matter how reasonable, as it got harder and harder to fix.
> UK has been so hot and dry this year that you are getting wild fires in England.
The UK does get wild fires. They are mostly controlled for the most part due to the great efforts of the forestry commission.
> WTF is wrong with people here are you guys so brainwashed by all the propaganda from oil and gas companies that you need to qualify every data point about global warming as maybe.
No, we need to be careful about pointing at specific data points and shouting "SEE!", because if it turns out not to be related, you hurt your argument.
> In the last year we have got a huge number of data points from around the world showing effects of global warming but each article on hackernews about it top comment is a qualifying statement.
There is no problem with caution, and no problem with honest good faith discussion.
> Stop being ostriches and burying your head in the sand.
Every generation believes in some disaster within their lifetime. This mostly affects young people, and then they grow older and see things don't actually really change so much.
It is always possible, that a measurement of any kind is flawed, though I consider it highly unlikely (I was very suprised, that there were any spots in Scotland, which have snow all year around at all, so they are probably fameous and any melting would be easily noticed). But that isn't the point. It could rather be a local phenomenum. It is always likely, that the local climate of a spot develops somewhat independent of the global climate.
The thing is: we can't "measure" the global climate. The global climate is the result of thousands of independant measurements. Like the one presented here. And they speak a very clear message, which to no suprise follows the raise of CO2 in the atmosphere.
> [..] so they are probably fameous and any melting would be easily noticed).
Famous in the 1700's? I believe the Scottish life was a lot more humble than it is now. I imagine these all-year snow locations would be more remote, harder to access and not a leisurely walk.
> The thing is: we can't "measure" the global climate.
Surely we can? It shouldn't be too difficult to have many weather stations around the world to make such measurements. Even satellite data could be quite accurate.
> And they speak a very clear message, which to no suprise follows the raise of CO2 in the atmosphere.
I'm not sure there is a clear message. I remember reading a while back of the effect of methane vs carbon dioxide on global warming, and methane by tonne was exceptionally worse. Maybe we should be concentrating efforts on ozone?
I am really not understanding what you want to say. And of course you would have had years without snow in the past, as there are always warmer and colder years in any region, there are always fluctuations. But the average temperature determines whether a year where the snow completely melts off is rather likely or unlikely. So the frequency of the snow-free years is a direct measure of the average temperature in that region of the world.
And snow in NZ doesn't tell anything at all on its own. It might just have been a cold year in that region, it could even be, that climate change would mean a cool down for that region. Climate change is about the temperature increase in the sum over all the world. It doesn't mean that every part of the globe equally warms up. A lot of the local temperatures are determined by geographical features and resulting stable weather influences. Take the gulf stream. That makes Europe much warmer than the equivalent parts of the nothern America. But if that fails due to climate change, temperatures in Europe would considerably go down.
Stories like this are intended to illustrate the probable effects of global warming in a fashion that most people can visualize since most people would be unable to understand the consequences when the data is presented in the form of "a X degree increase in global mean temperature." Heck, even people who do research in climate change would have difficulty visualizing the impact since local variations in temperature across the year is effectively noise that is about two orders of magnitude greater than the signal.
This is an illustration, not proof. If it is being used as a data point in any research, it is one among many.
Fair point. To make the global impact more clear, I would say something like: "Scotland is amongst many locations this year around the world with reduced snow coverage, including X, Y, Z.". That makes a stronger case for global warming in my opinion, and is still understandable locally.
This is about patterns though, not single events. The point isn’t just that Scotland is snow-free with record-breaking heat this year, but that it has been increasingly snow-free and hotter in recent times. Has NZ been getting colder at the same time rest of the world is heating up, or did they just have one colder winter than normal?
> This is about patterns though, not single events.
I agree, and I don't think we know enough.
> The point isn’t just that Scotland is snow-free with record-breaking heat this year, but that it has been increasingly snow-free and hotter in recent times.
I agree that snow coverage has seen a trend of reduction, my point is this specific event has happened before, and we should be careful about how we handle that.
> Has NZ been getting colder at the same time rest of the world is heating up, or did they just have one colder winter than normal?
It was one unusually cold winter at the same time as a heatwave in the UK.
As for checking snow in Scotland its pretty easy, there's a limited number of places of "perpetual snow".
EDIT: Not that "checking on snow in the past was harder" helps your argument in any way. If it was harder to check for snow a couple of hundred years ago then that makes it more likely that all snow _hadn't_ melted which is teh opposite of what you need to argue to argue against global warming.
I haven't checked, but I also don't doubt it. The point is that it's unlikely to have been this specific event. There has likely been many similar events in the past, for example when some of the rivers dried up, there were warnings from people hundreds of years ago carved into the stones.
> As for checking snow in Scotland its pretty easy, there's a limited number of places of "perpetual snow".
This may not have always been common knowledge, or if it was, something not of interest or worthy of daily check-ups.
> EDIT: Not that "checking on snow in the past was harder" helps your argument in any way. If it was harder to check for snow a couple of hundred years ago then that makes it more likely that all snow _hadn't_ melted which is teh opposite of what you need to argue to argue against global warming.
It was harder not only because of environment, but also because there was no interest in modern global warming back then, there was not the investment to pay people to investigate it.
Lastly, I'm not arguing against global warming. I'm arguing that we should be more careful about attributing every single abnormal environment change to it.
